flutter-wipe

A fast and efficient command-line tool to clean up Flutter projects and reclaim disk space with parallel processing support.

What it does

flutter-wipe recursively scans a directory for Flutter projects and executes flutter clean in each of them. This removes the build directory, which can often grow very large, freeing up a significant amount of disk space.

New in v0.3.0: Enhanced with multi-threading and parallel processing for faster scanning and cleaning of multiple projects simultaneously.

Installation

Using the installer script (Linux/macOS)

You can install flutter-wipe using the following command:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AmanSikarwar/flutter-wipe/main/install.sh | sh

This will download the latest release, and install it to /usr/local/bin.

From source

You can also install flutter-wipe from source using Cargo:

cargo install --git https://github.com/AmanSikarwar/flutter-wipe

Usage

Simply run flutter-wipe in the directory you want to clean:

flutter-wipe

Or, you can specify a directory to scan:

flutter-wipe --directory /path/to/your/projects

The tool also has a shorter alias, fw:

fw

Additional Options

Parallel Processing

By default, flutter-wipe uses parallel processing to speed up project scanning and cleaning:

# Use 4 threads for parallel processing
flutter-wipe --threads 4

# Use all available CPU cores (default)
flutter-wipe

# Disable parallel processing and run sequentially
flutter-wipe --sequential

Exclude patterns

You can exclude specific directories from being scanned:

flutter-wipe --exclude "test-projects" --exclude "archived"

Configuration file

You can use a configuration file to set default exclude patterns and other options. The tool looks for config files in these locations (in order):

1. flutter-wipe.toml (current directory)
2. flutter-wipe.config.toml (current directory)
3. ~/.flutter-wipe.toml (home directory)
4. ~/.config/flutter-wipe.toml (config directory)

Or specify a custom config file:

flutter-wipe --config /path/to/config.toml

Example configuration file:

# Additional exclude patterns
exclude_patterns = [
    "custom-cache",
    "temp-flutter-projects",
    "archived-projects",
    "backup",
]

# Whether to use default excludes (true by default)
default_excludes = true

# Number of threads to use for parallel processing
# If not specified, uses the number of CPU cores
threads = 8

# Whether to run sequentially instead of in parallel
# Useful for debugging or on systems with limited resources
sequential = false

Default exclusions

By default, the tool excludes these directories:

• .git (Git repositories)
• build (Build artifacts)
• node_modules (Node.js dependencies)
• .dart_tool (Dart tools)
• .pub-cache, pub-cache (Pub cache)
• flutter, flutter-sdk, .flutter (Flutter SDK)
• .mason_cache, .mason-cache, mason-cache (Mason cache)
• Directories specified in PUB_CACHE and FLUTTER_ROOT environment variables
• Common Flutter SDK locations in home directory

You can disable default exclusions with:

flutter-wipe --no-default-excludes

Performance Examples

# Scan using all available CPU cores (fastest)
flutter-wipe

# Scan using 4 threads
flutter-wipe -j 4

# Scan sequentially (slower but uses less system resources)
flutter-wipe --sequential

# Show help with all available options
flutter-wipe --help

Real-world usage scenarios

# Clean development workspace with custom excludes
flutter-wipe --directory ~/Projects --exclude "archive" --exclude "samples"

# Clean specific directory with limited threads for system stability
flutter-wipe --directory /large/flutter/workspace --threads 2

# Use configuration file for consistent settings across team
flutter-wipe --config team-flutter-wipe.toml

Performance

flutter-wipe v0.3.0 introduces significant performance improvements through multi-threading and parallel processing:

Parallel Operations

• Project Discovery: Scans directories in parallel using multiple threads
• Size Calculation: Calculates build directory sizes concurrently
• Project Cleaning: Executes flutter clean on multiple projects simultaneously
• Progress Tracking: Real-time progress bars for each operation phase

Performance Benefits

• Faster Scanning: Directory traversal is parallelized, reducing scan time for large codebases
• Concurrent Cleaning: Multiple Flutter projects are cleaned simultaneously instead of sequentially
• Resource Utilization: Better utilization of multi-core systems
• Scalability: Performance improves with the number of available CPU cores

Thread Safety

All parallel operations are thread-safe and use:

• Rayon for data parallelism
• Atomic operations for progress tracking
• Safe Rust patterns to prevent race conditions

Building from source

To build flutter-wipe from source, you'll need the Rust toolchain installed.

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/AmanSikarwar/flutter-wipe.git

2. Build the project:

   cd flutter-wipe
   cargo build --release

The executable will be located in target/release/flutter-wipe.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.